After the picking and shucking is done (actually while the shucking is being done), the action moves inside.
The ears are washed, whisking away as many of the remaining silks as humanly possible and then placed into boiling water to be blanched.
Blanched, isn't that a strange word? I think I used it correctly here. If I didn't, someone please let me know!
After a few minutes on the stove, the ears take a cool bath.
Then it's on to the cutting board.
Throughout my childhood, my mom used an electric knife to quickly remove the kernels from the cob. I was going to do a whole blog post about why we use an electric knife because of the quantity of corn we put up.
Imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen and saw this...
OK, I didn't get a good shot of the puny - oh so not electric knife - in mom's hand.
This one is a bit better...
After a few dozen ears done the old-fashioned way, my mom decided to go back to the electric knife because her hand was cramping. Unfortunately, the electric knife was no where to be found. We looked high and low; in cabinets and in drawers, but no electric knife. So, it was back to the little knife to finish up.
Once off the cob, it went into one of my mom's beautiful bowls. She has a weakness for beautiful crockery. I'm afraid I may have inherited the weakness. Fortunately I don't get to very many auctions, antique shops and estate sales so I'm safe for now.
Back to the corn...doesn't it look delicious!
After six buckets of corn picked, shucked, washed, blanched, cooled and cut, we ended up with 21 bags of corn ready for the freezer...
And a bucket (or two) of empty cobs ready for a return trip to the field.
We are not the only ones who enjoy corn on the cob. I found Molly enjoying an ear at the end of the evening.
Since our inaugural freeze fest, we've put up another 17 bags of corn and it's really just hitting its peak sweetness now. I think there may be some more freezing ahead of me.
That wraps up my series on INCREDIBLE Sweet Corn. Hope you enjoyed!
Looks almost like my house! We cook and cool ours outside on a gas turkey burner (can't think of the name of it for real, but hopefully you can visualize the pot and burner set up) and cool it in coolers outside. That keeps all the heat out of the kitchen, where we do cut and bag it. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI am so jealous. We have not had time to put up any freezer corn yet as last week was our county fair and I am traveling all of this week. I hope the raccoons have left some for me to freeze when I finally return home.
ReplyDeleteIt sure looked great good enough to eat. When I was a child we would go into the corn field back of our house and get the field corn it was very good back then. Can't do that now. People have stopped and ask if they may pick a few ears of field corn they remember how it was when they were young. Sure taste a lot different now.
ReplyDeleteHave fun while you work